Ashes
by Paradise2000
Summary: Meant to be Cam Walker and Simon Walker fluff. With a bit of angst chucked in. Better summary inside. I hope I didn't make Walker oversensitive.


**Ashes** by Paradise2000

Chapters: One

Sort: Hurt, Angst

A\N: If you think I did Walker out of character, feel free to tell me or mention it in the reviews.

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Summary: Cam Walker and Simon Walker. Meant to be fluff. Angsty fluff. A little sad. But cute. I don't see how Walker dealing drugs, personally, in my opinion, and lying to people, makes him a bad, sick and generally pure evil person. Some people think it all lies on what happens on face level on Hollyoaks with Walker, for goodness sake, and aaaaargh! I'm getting absolutely sick of it, friends. I'm not saying it's everyone, but it's annoying. How can he be a bad person? I don't understand. He's got a colossal soft spot for his baby brother's who's lying in a coma in hospital. He loves him more than anything! Surely that means something. Everyone just seems to go off solely what he does to Brendan and the rest of the Hollyoaks community.

Walker could not believe it. His little brother, the most precious person in his life, was in danger of dying. Or so that nurse said. She said he was weakening, more so, he could remember hearing that. That wretched nurse. His sibling, his life hanging by a thread – or a few – all thanks to the ministrations of that damn fool Brendan Brady. That monster who'd sold him drugs – taken advantage of Cam – _his little brother Cam_ – that easily. He couldn't describe the intense grief and pain, as well as anger, that had gathered in his chest, numbing his senses, when he had been counting out borrowed money that he had got from a inmate – or, definitely, more so, an acquaintance, friends he could do with out – in a cell, to be called out into the hall, into the dining room, where he had spent the usual banal hour in lunchbreak – or in this case, thirty minutes – before he was interrupted by another inmate, who muttered to him something – it'd all been a blur of confusion and horror to him, he couldn't remember so well, only a little bit – along the lines of 'little brother', 'bought some heroin from Brendan Brady', 'in hospital – overdose – it sent him into a coma'. He was going to pay, he was hellbent on that. Nobody hurt one of Walker's most precious – and probably the only one of those – family members.

Walker couldn't stop the colossal guilt that maybe his brother had thought it was okay to do it and do drugs because he dealed them. That made him feel terrible. In hospital, many times, Walker had promised Cam he'd get better. That he'd come out of his coma! Walker knew full well that he wasn't the soppy, sentimental person even when it came to the majority of his family – or friends, for that matter, if he'd ever had any proper, true ones – and he certainly wasn't the affectionate type, but he had always loved his little brother, and had had a soft spot for his safety and wellbeing as long as he could remember – he had always been overprotective of him – definitely, if someone hurt Cam, it was like a row of dominos, they hurt him as well. And now was the same. As much as Cam had admittedly brought this on himself, he cared. But the doctors had said, they had told him, he was stable, they would find him some sort of treatment, some sort of medication, anything so that Cam would go back to normal. Not that things had ever been that normal, with Walker always run down with the police or a junkie on his back, both wanting something from him, a lengthy prison sentence for being a drug dealer (or at first it had been a caution) or a packet of cannabis. Cam would get better, he just had to.

Or Walker didn't know what he'd do. In between trying to wangle Brendan into more dodgy deals and trying to get the police off his chest, he might be portrayed as a tough do-gooder in the face of being an undercover cop, but to others, he was a sick, nasty, sneaky man who set out to do his worst and destroy people's lives, demoralising them by getting them to run him petty errands, how he put strain on them, how they stood up for themselves and decided to back out when the job was only half done, how their families and their friends found out. How he left, none the worse, in the midst of the destruction. He'd faced that malicious woman, who'd had the nerve to confront him, in that office, after she'd slapped him, and reminded him of how he was on the run after shooting a police officer, how Brendan's dealings had put his little brother in hospital. Tears had come to his eyes, when that nurse had told him Cam was in a worse condition than he had been when Walker had last seen him. It felt so strange, still, to ignore the pain and the guilt, and the anger and yearning for vengeance directed at Brendan, and to call the phone and ask for a 'Ward C3', to say he was 'Callum's brother'. It seemed unreal, all of this. How that nurse thought he should get go of Cam forever.

The visions still lingered in his memories; crying as he saw Cam in hospital once again, coming into a room, hellbent on his revenge on Brendan, to find Brendan – to think, his _acquaintance_, who'd let him down and failed this heist, nearly getting himself and Walker caught by the police, and putting his little brother's life in danger, at a standstill – stroking the smooth, sleek back of a small cockroach, on the floor, bending down on his knees, one hand motionless. Brendan had blown every chance with him. He'd carried on walking right through there, stopping and giving the shorter-statured man a cold, chilling stare, that seemed to simply burn right through Brendan, as if Walker's eyes knew everything Brendan had ever done wrong. Brendan had looked up at him, his eyes pleading for a second chance, to make up for this ruined drugs job, also managing to land Walker in it, his gaze miserable and empty of anything but depression and hopelessness. Walker merely carried on staring right through him, unnervingly. Brendan left off stroking the cockroach and looked at Walker again, before letting his eyes slide to the floor. "This is only the friend I've got left," he'd said. Walker looked at him in a cold, silent rage. He stamped on the cockroach. Brendan looked indignant, angry and upset. "What'd you do that for?" Walker gave him a long, hard, lingering stare, full of anger, before saying, "You can't trust anyone here," and walking off.

Walker was not going to forget, as he hadn't done so then, just how much Brendan had managed to land him in it. Walker was not as trusting as Brendan as an acquaintance, as a business friend, as he had been before. When he thought of bailing Brendan out of situations, he bluntly turned it down, because of the suffering Brendan had put Walker through, and to his family. The thought of losing someone who truly mattered to him that much, as Cam did, was agonising. Someone who he loved more than anything. No matter what bravado he put on as the cold, untrustworthy man for the rest – and the entire – of the Hollyoaks community to see, he cared. He wasn't giving up. Not till every breath was forced out of him and he was gone from this world. His little brother was a fighter. He knew it.

He was putting on a tough front, asking Joel to do him a favour, although the latter sulked and moaned about it, but deep down, underneath the vehemently determined, harsh, cold-natured exterior, was a desperate man, who was slowly crumbling under the fear of losing his most important person, every idea of happiness – and, oh, the heartbreak he felt, and the helpless pain and the guilt, at his little brother suffering – and his future dreams were turning to flakes like ashes crushed under a fingertip in his hand, blowing away in the wind. Why he was tormenting himself when he knew Cam would recover. Whilst some small part of himself was buried in self-denial, the other merely questioned, as much as he hated that nurse and her ridiculous, unfair ideas, if he should consider letting go of Cam forever like she suggested – or more like she advised – for better or for worse, he didn't know – he felt himself welling up again as he thought if that was what Cam would have wanted him to do – to be happy, to move on and live his life. But he couldn't even think of doing that without Cam, leaving someone that precious behind. It wasn't an option. For once, he didn't care about achieving his own aims, like winning the latest feud or dispute with Brendan, or dealing with some prying person who chose to rudely poke their nose in – the only priority right now was Cam – and he prayed, his recovery – all his hopes were pinned on that. Standing on the balcony to the Chez Chez, his phone clutched loosely in his hands, he could vaguely remember arguing with the nurse in Dee Valley Hospital, talking to Cam before sitting in silence for a while, deep in thought about everything that happened to him, before kissing his little brother and walking out, in a sense of sheer desperation and misery – whilst snatches of conversation floated past him as he walked, barely aware of the people passing by him, brushing past him from time to time.

Was there meant to be any true definition in life apart from living it the way he wanted to and sneaking and doing dodgy deals? He still held the same affectionate memories, as any brother should, not so happily of the comatose young man lying helpless and immobile in a hospital bed, but of the sparky person his brother had been, who'd liked flirting with brunettes and surfing with his friends – the one Walker felt he should remember with appreciation. Nothing could make you forget the ones you loved. Beyond everyone's viewpoint but his own, even Brendan's, his former dreams might be like ashes, scattered, blowing away from him on the wind, far away – but the flame of love he held for his precious little brother burned eternally, bright amongst the cinders of destroyed chances he had once had, remembering his little brother, young and free, well and happy.

The End.

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A\N: Finished. My first Hollyoaks fic. Clang, I probably screwed it up and babbled too much, and turned Walker into a sentimental pulp. But isn't he always like that with his little brother? I know Cam's his family, and one of those Walker loves the most, but even so, the tenderness and gentleness he displays towards him is colossal in difference to the cold hard persona of Walker that everyone sees as the nasty undercover cop. Good cop, I say! If you love someone that much, then, well...Doesn't that say it?...Doesn't that tell you a lot? Personally, I think Walker's a good person. I feel so sorry for Walker with his little brother in hospital. I don't think that's unnatural. The extra details I put in are either fake, that I made up, or flashbacks dating from the episode where it shows the failed drugs heist with Brendan and Walker (though I can't remember the exact date for the life of me. This was the episode where we first meet Walker's brother.), and 10th and 11th of September, as well as I think it was the 7th of September, though I'm not sure. I think Walker's relationship with his little brother is so cute. Please read and review.


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